Wall mounted fire extinguisher cabinets have been around for many years and are often required in commercial establishments such as office buildings and schools where a wall mounted cabinet has a front glass panel covering a fire extinguisher. The glass is intended to deter unnecessary uses of the fire extinguisher and also allow a viewing window so that one can see the fire extinguisher in the cabinet. In case of a fire, persons are instructed to break the glass exposing the fire extinguisher so that the fire extinguisher can be removed. See for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,638,906 to McCabe. However, there are known problems with such cabinets.
Currently, in the fire extinguisher industry, there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 different cabinets, most of which have regular glass break panels in them. Fire extinguisher service technicians have a few options (all not so great) in regards to replacing broken break panels. They can carry large panes of uncut glass and cut the glass to fit each cabinet, but this is dangerous because they frequently injure themselves and they have lots of glass scrap leftover so that is not an efficient use of the glass. Some carry pre-cut glass of the most common sizes but this is a problem because they frequently are serving a property (especially an older property) with several different cabinets from different manufacturers that has old, outdated cabinets that they don't have glass that fits. So they usually have to measure the ones they need and come back which is a very inefficient use of their time.
Another option would be for the service technicians to carry about fifteen or more different sizes of panels made by the manufacturers of each cabinet (some are glass, some are acrylic) but this does not work. When there are 10 or 20 technicians with that many trucks, one would need a huge inventory to supply all those needs. So this option is impractical and never used).
Glass panels are becoming obsolete in view of other problems. Breaking the glass can require the user to have to insert their hand(s) through broken glass fragments left in the cabinet which can cut and harm the user. Sometimes the user will have to manually remove the loose and jagged glass pieces with their fingers which further increases the chances of causing harm to the user.
Since most jurisdictions require their commercially installed fire extinguisher cabinets must be inspected every year and recertified, installers have to remount new glass into the cabinets. This can be difficult and often causes the serviceman installer to take measurements of the cabinet on a first trip and have to make a return trip to the location at a different time and place, causing further delay and expense.
Attempts have been made over the years to come up with alternatives to plate, glass such as attempting to use safety type glass which when struck immediately disintegrates into very small pieces. See for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,833,006 to McCabe. However, there are also problems with using this type of safety glass.
One problem is that safety glass can often cost substantially more than plate glass. Also, there are different sizes to the types of fire extinguisher cabinets that are being used, so that one size piece of safety glass cannot fit all the different sizes of fire extinguisher cabinets.
Additionally, safety glass cannot be resized, since cutting into any edge or side can easily weaken and cause the entire panel to break down.
The installer will often not be able to install the safety glass in different sized cabinets. Again this can be difficult since the installer will only be able take measurements of the cabinet on a first trip and have to make a return trip to the location at a different time and place to install a new panel, causing further delay and expense
Attempts have been made to use some type of plastic panel with a limited number of grid scored sections such as large wide rectangle patterns, where the panel limited to being used in only a one size cabinet. These panels cannot be resized to fit more than one size of cabinet in view of their one size application. Also, these prior art scored panels can be difficult to break since there are few pieces that are actually scored in place.
These prior art scored panels can be further problematic when the installer is a serviceman for a fire extinguisher company must make individual field trips to diversely located destinations where the fire extinguisher cabinets need to be recertified for use. A single size prior art scored panel cannot fit the many different sized cabinets in the market. The serviceman installer will often have to make a return trip to get the right size panel of the job which increase the time to recertify the cabinets and results in higher labor costs, and related transportation costs for having to return to the same location at a different time. Since the single grid size panel is not used for many applications, the installer will usually switch to plate glass or safety glass which has additional problems.
Thus, the need exists for solutions to the above problems with the prior art.